Word count guidelines for essays, blog posts and social media

Word limits look arbitrary until you have marked a hundred essays or edited a hundred posts. Then the logic shows up: a limit is a proxy for how much attention the reader is willing to give, and for how much thinking the writer had to do to fit inside it.

Common targets

Why longer is not automatically better

The idea that long posts rank better is a misreading of correlation. Thorough content tends to rank well, and thorough content tends to be longer — but padding a 700-word idea to 2,000 words produces a worse page, not a better one. The reader's question gets answered later, and the bounce rate says so.

The right length is the length at which you have answered the question and stopped. If you are adding a section because the count is short, you are writing for the counter rather than the reader.

How to cut 20 per cent without losing the argument

1. 1Delete the warm-up. The first paragraph of most drafts is the writer clearing their throat; the piece usually starts at paragraph two.
2. 2Cut hedges: 'very', 'quite', 'rather', 'somewhat', 'I think that', 'it is important to note that'.
3. 3Collapse repeated evidence. Two examples make a pattern; the third is decoration.
4. 4Turn 'there is / there are' constructions into direct subjects and verbs — often a five-word saving each.
5. 5Replace a long explanation with a concrete number. Precision is shorter than description.
6. 6Cut the summary paragraph that repeats what the reader just read, unless the piece is genuinely long.

How to add 20 per cent honestly

• Add a counter-argument and answer it. This is the single most common gap in short essays.
• Add a worked example with real numbers rather than a hypothetical one.
• Add the 'so what' — what should the reader do differently on Monday morning?
• Add the limits of your claim. Saying where an argument stops working strengthens it.

Characters, words and the platforms that count them

Social platforms and meta tags count characters, not words. A useful conversion is 5.5 characters plus a space per average English word, so a 160-character meta description is roughly 25 words, and a 280-character post is about 45.

A working habit

Draft long, then cut to the limit deliberately rather than writing to fit from the start. The first draft is for finding the argument; the edit is where the word count becomes a design decision instead of a constraint.